Veterans for Common Sense

June 1, 2008 – There’s been a relative lull in news coverage and debate about Iraq in recent weeks — which is odd, because May could turn out to have been one of the most important months of the war. While Washington’s attention has been fixed elsewhere, military analysts have watched with astonishment as the Iraqi government and army have gained control for the first time of the port city of Basra and the sprawling Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, routing the Shiite militias that have ruled them for years and sending key militants scurrying to Iran. At the same time, Iraqi and U.S. forces have pushed forward with a long-promised offensive in Mosul, the last urban refuge of al-Qaeda. So many of its leaders have now been captured or killed that U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, renowned for his cautious assessments, said that the terrorists have “never been closer to defeat than they are now.”

Iraq passed a turning point last fall when the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign launched in early 2007 produced a dramatic drop in violence and quelled the incipient sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites. Now, another tipping point may be near, one that sees the Iraqi government and army restoring order in almost all of the country, dispersing both rival militias and the Iranian-trained “special groups” that have used them as cover to wage war against Americans. It is — of course — too early to celebrate; though now in disarray, the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr could still regroup, and Iran will almost certainly seek to stir up new violence before the U.S. and Iraqi elections this fall. Still, the rapidly improving conditions should allow U.S. commanders to make some welcome adjustments — and it ought to mandate an already-overdue rethinking by the “this-war-is-lost” caucus in Washington, including Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

Gen. David H. Petraeus signaled one adjustment in recent testimony to Congress, saying that he would probably recommend troop reductions in the fall going beyond the ongoing pullback of the five “surge” brigades deployed last year. Gen. Petraeus pointed out that attacks in Iraq hit a four-year low in mid-May and that Iraqi forces were finally taking the lead in combat and on multiple fronts at once — something that was inconceivable a year ago. As a result the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki now has “unparalleled” public support, as Gen. Petraeus put it, and U.S. casualties are dropping sharply. Eighteen American soldiers died in May, the lowest total of the war and an 86 percent drop from the 126 who died in May 2007.

If the positive trends continue, proponents of withdrawing most U.S. troops, such as Mr. Obama, might be able to responsibly carry out further pullouts next year. Still, the likely Democratic nominee needs a plan for Iraq based on sustaining an improving situation, rather than abandoning a failed enterprise. That will mean tying withdrawals to the evolution of the Iraqi army and government, rather than an arbitrary timetable; Iraq’s 2009 elections will be crucial. It also should mean providing enough troops and air power to continue backing up Iraqi army operations such as those in Basra and Sadr City. When Mr. Obama floated his strategy for Iraq last year, the United States appeared doomed to defeat. Now he needs a plan for success.

May 29, 2008 – Because of the arrogant, corrupt lies of George W. Bush and his neocon handlers my nephew is dead, and I am mad as hell.

My nephew, my sister’s son, died in Iraq a few days before this Memorial Day.

Jason Dene was not killed by enemy fire nor friendly fire but by Bush’s brutal and cynical stop-loss program.

Jason grew up in Orwell and Rutland. He was in his mid-30s, a career Army officer due retire next month. His wife and children were planning his homecoming.

Because of Bush’s abusive stop-loss policy, Jason had been sent into an unwanted third tour of duty. He was a father of three and could not afford to lose his pension. Some “volunteer Army”.

During his three 15-month tours in Iraq, exposure to roadside bombs and other job-related injuries caused Jason to be hospitalized several times for concussion and internal bleeding and other injuries. Recently, Jason’s condition was such that the Department of Defense flew him from Iraq to Dover Air Force Base for surgery. He was released from the hospital into the loving arms of the government who sent him directly back into Iraq. He was put on active duty while he was still on a liquid diet, unable to eat solid food because of a throat hemorrhage due to a botched surgery at a military hospital.

To date all the family has heard from the Army is that Jason variously died “in his sleep” and “in his bunk” and “in his quarters” and my favorite “sleep apnea complicated by smoking cigarettes,” in other words, natural causes.

After his second tour Jason returned home with severe mental and physical issues. He was certainly in no condition to be pressed into a third tour. He wanted out of the army. But Jason was a victim of the liar’s back-door draft.

The administration knows the war could not continue if the draft was reinstated, hence the criminally deceptive stop-loss program. At all costs, the administration wants to avoid Vietnam-scale student protests. In this case the cost fell on Jason, whose death will not be included as a war casualty. Jason Dene will not be buried at Arlington National Cemetery; he will just sort of … disappear quietly (they hope).

How many others have died in Iraq of “natural causes,” the soldiers we will never hear about?

Because of George Bush, the arrogant, the corrupt, the liar, the war criminal, my nephew is dead and my sister and the rest of my family are devastated.

Yes, I am very, very angry. How would you feel?

(Jason is the nephew of actress Mia Farrow)

May 29, 2008 – I’m delighted Senator Webb’s GI Bill and Senator McCain’s opposition to it presents another opportunity to emphasize that the neoconservative elite who lied about Iraq also lied about “supporting the troops” — the very club they used to silence criticism when they lied about Iraq. If we can reach the place where a super-majority of the U.S. population is permanently convinced that you can’t trust anything related to military affairs said by neocon elitists like Pastor John Hagee’s AIPAC, it’s quite plausible that we could, at long last, enjoy a Presidency of the United States in which the U.S. commits no new violations of international law with respect to the use of military force.

In the latest evidence that neocons “support the troops” as long as it doesn’t cost anything to them or their rich elitist friends, Bloomberg reports:

In the midst of the worst surge in mortgage defaults in seven decades, foreclosures in U.S. towns where soldiers live are increasing at a pace almost four times the national average.
You might think veterans’ groups would be very concerned about this. You’d be right.

“We’ve never faced a situation like this, not in the Vietnam War, World War II, or the Korean War, where so many military are in danger of losing their homes,” said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, a Washington-based advocacy group started in 2002 by Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans.

How does this affect the family of an individual soldier?

U.S. Air Force Technical Sergeant Jeffrey VerSteegh…departed…in April for his third tour in Iraq. The father of four may lose his home when he returns.

The four-bedroom farmhouse he and his wife, Kathleen, own…went into default in December after their monthly mortgage costs doubled to $1,100. Kathleen missed work because of breast cancer and they struggled to keep up the house payment, falling behind on other bills. Their bankruptcy was approved by the court a week after VerSteegh left for Iraq.

Congress has at its disposal a simple means for making sure that Sergeant VerSteegh and his wife Kathleen are not thrown out of their house. Representative Raul Grijalva has introduced H. R. 6116, “To allow homeowners of moderate-value homes who are subject to mortgage foreclosure proceedings to remain in their homes as renters.” The bill draws on economist Dean Baker’s “own-to-rent” proposal. Moderate income homeowners facing foreclosure could stay in their homes as long as they paid fair market rent.

If you agree that your America wouldn’t throw Sergeant VerSteegh and his wife Kathleen out of their house, why not call your Representative at 202-225-3121 and ask them to co-sponsor Grijalva’s bill?

May 31, 2008 – The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs last week said it would refuse to abide by a 14-year-old presidential directive requiring it to help register veterans to vote.

It says doing so would detract from providing medical care and benefits to veterans.

On May 1, California officials asked the VA to help register veterans, citing a 1994 executive order by President Bill Clinton requiring federal agencies to undertake the responsibility if a state’s top elections official makes the request.

The VA’s May 19 refusal, which received little media attention, has repercussions beyond California. It provides the latest sign that the VA is vigorously resisting organized voter registration drives on its property as a presidential election nears.

Earlier this month, the agency banned any group or individual from registering voters in any of its facilities. Critics say politics are behind the decision and accused the VA of trying to prevent low-income veterans from voting.

But VA chief of staff Tom Bowman said that veterans already receive help, when requested, for registration and that no one is complaining.

“My information is that there has not been a great hue and cry from patients that they’re being denied assistance,” Bowman said. “To say this is politically motivated is simply inaccurate and untrue.”

VA Secretary James Peake, an appointee of President Bush, told California that Clinton’s order could not force a federal agency to comply if doing so isn’t “practicable.”

Attorney Scott Rafferty, who is suing the VA over voter registration restrictions, said the agency is deliberately misinterpreting Clinton’s executive order.

“The rule allows no discretion. It says ‘shall,’ ” said Rafferty. “They say they can’t afford it, but they’ve identified no cost. I’m just kind of baffled.”

Under the order, the VA would have to provide voter registration materials to veterans living at its facilities, help them fill out forms and then send the completed forms to the state.

So far, California is the only state to have made the request.

Voter registration “activities, while extremely important, would require substantial use of VA personnel,” Peake said in a May 19th letter to California’s secretary of state, Debra Bowen.

“Using VA resources in this manner would diminish the agency’s ability to fulfill its mission of providing medical care and benefits to veterans,” Peake wrote.

The dispute has thus far barely raised a ripple in political circles or in the mainstream media nationally or in Florida, where the 2000 presidential election was decided by a mere 537 votes.

Barack Obama is one of just a few national political figures to reference the issue.

In a recent speech in Pennsylvania, Obama said, “There is nothing patriotic about denying wounded troops the ability to vote. … It’s time to reverse this shameful decision.”

John McCain’s campaign did not respond to a request for the candidate’s position on the issue.

“At a time when the nation is at war and seriously injured servicemen and women are returning home daily, anything which detracts from this health care mission would be inappropriate,” Peake told California officials.

A spokeswoman for Bowen’s office said California is considering its legal options but declined to elaborate.

The VA has previously allowed nonpartisan groups, such as the League of Women Voters, to register voters on its property. But that changed without explanation earlier this month, when all groups were banned.

The VA now says only its official volunteers can assist veterans who seek help to register. Critics say they fear the VA will not make registering veterans a priority or will only register those known to be Republicans.

Rafferty challenged the VA’s registration policy in federal court. A judge dismissed the complaint because he said it failed to prove anyone had been prevented from voting. That decision is being appealed.

May 30, 2008 – Some U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq appear to have launched a major initiative to covert thousands of Iraqi citizens to Christianity by distributing Bibles and other fundamentalist Christian literature translated into Arabic to Iraqi Muslims.

A recent article published on the website of Mission Network News reported that Bible Pathway Ministries, a fundamentalist Christian organization, has provided thousands of a special military edition of its Daily Devotional Bible study book to members of the 101st Airborne Division of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, currently stationed in Iraq, the project “came into being when a chaplain in Iraq (who has since finished his tour) requested some books from Bible Pathway Ministries (BPM).”

“The resulting product is a 6″x9″ 496-page illustrated book with embossed cover containing 366 daily devotional commentaries, maps, charts, and additional helpful information,” the Mission Network News report says.

Chief Warrant Officer Rene Llanos of the 101st Airborne told Mission Network News, “the soldiers who are patrolling and walking the streets are taking along this copy, and they’re using it to minister to the local residents.”

“Our division is also getting ready to head toward Afghanistan, so there will be copies heading out with the soldiers,” Llanos said. “We need to pray for protection for our soldiers as they patrol and pray that God would continue to open doors. The soldiers are being placed in strategic places with a purpose. They’re continuing to spread the Word.”

Karen Hawkins, a BPM official, said military chaplains “were trying to encourage [soldiers] to be in the Word everyday because they’re in a very dangerous situation, and they need that protection.”

That would appear to violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibiting government officials, including military personnel, from using the machinery of the state to promote any form of religion. The book’s cover includes the logos of the five branches of the armed forces giving the impression that it’s a publication sanctioned by the Pentagon.
The distribution of the Bibles and Christian literature comes on the heels of a report published Wednesday by McClatchy Newspapers stating that U.S. Marines guarding the entrance to the city of Fallujah have been handing out “witnessing coins” to Sunni Muslims entering the city that read in Arabic on one side: “Where will you spend eternity?” and “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16” on the other.

A Pentagon spokesman said he was unaware of the issue involving the distribution of coins and Bibles and declined to comment.

The issue comes at a particularly sensitive time for Sunnis who recently clashed with U.S. military in an area west of Baghdad week after an American soldier was found to have used a Koran, the Islamic holy book, for target practice. Following a daylong protest by Iraqis that threatened to turn violent, Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond issued a public apology to Sunnis in the area.

“I come before you here seeking your forgiveness,” Hammond said. “In the most humble manner I look in your eyes today and I say please forgive me and my soldiers.”

The soldier who shot up the Koran was disciplined and removed from duty in Iraq.

Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of the government watchdog agency The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), said the religious intolerance among U.S. military personnel calls for a federal investigation.

“The shocking actions revealed just last week of American soldiers in the combat zones of Iraq and Afghanistan callously using the Koran for automatic weapons “target practice” is absolutely connected to the same issues of national security breach wrought by our United States armed forces proselytizing the local populations via the distribution to them of fundamentalist Christian coins, bibles, tracts, comics and related religious materials written in Arabic,” Weistein said.

“The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has been acutely aware of such astonishing unconstitutional and illicit proselytizing in Iraq and Afghanistan for over three years now and knows how massively pervasive it really is. These proselytizing transgressions are all blatant violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and MRFF is now demanding that any and all responsible military personnel be immediately prosecuted under Article 92 of the UCMJ: Failure to Obey an Order or Regulation,” Weinstein added.

Members of the U.S. military first started actively proselytizing Iraqi Muslims soon after the U.S. invaded Iraq in March 2003.

In a newsletter published in 2004 by the fundamentalist group International Ministerial Fellowship (IMF), Capt. Steve Mickel, an Army chaplain, claimed that Iraqis were eager to be converted to Christianity and that he personally tried to convert dozens of Iraqis, which is also an apparent constitutional violation.

“I am able to give them tracts on how to be saved, printed in Arabic,” Mickel said, according to a copy of the IMF newsletter. “I wish I had enough Arabic Bibles to give them as well. The issue of mailing Arabic Bibles into Iraq from the U.S. is difficult (given the current postal regulations prohibiting all religious materials contrary to Islam except for personal use of the soldiers). But the hunger for the Word of God in Iraq is very great, as I have witnessed first-hand.”

Mickel evangelized Iraqis while delivering leftover food to local residents from his unit’s mess hall. He handed out Bibles translated into Arabic in the village of Ad Dawr, a predominantly Sunni territory where Saddam Hussein was captured.

“Such fundamentalist Christian proselytizing DIRECTLY violates General Order 1A, Part 2, Section J issued by General Tommy Franks on behalf of the United States Central Command (USCENTCOM) back in December of 2000 which strictly prohibits “proselytizing of any religion, faith or practice,” said Weinstein, a former Reagan administration White House counsel, former general counsel to presidential candidate H. Ross Perot, and former Air Force Judge Advocate General (JAG).

In addition to coins and Bibles, there have been reports of the distribution to Iraqi children of Christian comic books published by companies such as Chick Publications. These inflammatory comic books, published in English and Arabic, not only depict Mohammed, but show both Mohammed and Muslims burning in hell because they did not accept Jesus as their savior before they died.

Chick Publications states on its website that its literature “is desperately needed by Muslims, but getting it to them without endangering our soldiers or enflaming the Muslim leadership will not be easy.”

Postal regulations prohibit sending bulk religious materials contrary to Islam into Iraq, but allow religious materials to be sent to an individual soldier for their personal use.

Sending more of these materials than would be necessary for an individual’s personal use, but not a large enough quantity to risk being flagged by the postal service, is one way that these materials are making their way into Iraq. Chick Publications advises those wanting to send their literature to military personnel to first find out “just what tracts would be most useful and how many they can effectively use,” and “to find out whether the tracts can be drop shipped from Chick Publications or if they should be sent as personal mail from the soldiers’ families.”

A spokesman for Chick refused to comment for this story about the comics handed out to Iraqis.

Meanwhile, members of the 101st Airborne stationed in Iraq will continue their work evangelizing Iraqis unless it is told otherwise.

Llanos, the division’s chief warrant officer, said about 2,000 copies of the military edition of the Bible provided to the 101st Airborne will soon be distributed to Iraqis.

However, reports on the Bible Pathway Ministries website up to 30,000 of the Christian books have been distributed to military personnel, some of which will presumably end up in the hands of Iraqis.